


death defying

by Vintar



Category: Borderlands
Genre: F/F, Hate Sex, Infidelity, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 08:44:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7308139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vintar/pseuds/Vintar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lilith says "we just want information," but this isn't Athena's first interrogation, and she knows this much: you don't pay attention to what the interrogator tells you, but the look in their eye when they tell it to you.</p><p>Lilith's eyes never leave her face, sharp and yellow and <i>furious</i>.</p><p>Lilith is going to kill her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	death defying

Lilith says "we just want information," but this isn't Athena's first interrogation, and she knows this much: you don't pay attention to what the interrogator tells you, but the look in their eye when they tell it to you.

Lilith's eyes never leave her face, sharp and yellow and _furious_.

Lilith is going to kill her.

When they take Athena down and tie her wrists, her impending death galls her. By the time she's staked out in the Pandoran sun, it's begun to fit her a little better, wearing in like a new pair of boots. Athena's killed people and corporations and cities-- who could bring her down but something else entirely? She's never killed a siren before, though she's tried. Her swing and a miss has come back to haunt her, and it's wearing the angriest smirk Athena's ever seen.

If Athena gets a chance to swing again, she's going to take it. She doesn't think she will, though. Her bindings are well practiced and secure, and the guns aimed at her are plentiful.

Everything is stacked on Lilith's side. All that Athena has is her gun and her shield, both out of reach and thoroughly unhelpful.

But Janey--

No. Athena is too smart to believe in last minute rescues. She _knows_ that she is. Over the course of her career she's seen them fail to happen over and over, and the light leaving someone's eyes is never as pathetic as when it's full of hope.

She won't let herself go out like that. If nothing else, she won't let Lilith have the satisfaction. Janey-- wonderful, amazing, Janey, Janey who never washes her dishes and constantly makes bad puns and always has a novel she's about to write, Janey who loves Athena like she actually deserves it, Janey who is _home_ \-- becomes someone she met once, a friendly face behind a counter, nothing more than a character in an old, old story. Athena is alone. It's easier that way.

So Athena tells her story. She lays it all out nice and neat, and she keeps her voice even and calm, even as her skin throbs hot in the sun and sweat pools in her boots. She tells her story, line by line, and she blinks the sweat from her eyes, and she watches Lilith like a fucking hawk.

Let her come close. Let her urge to gloat pull her within reach. Let her get so close that Athena can kick the legs out from under her and snap her skinny little neck with her thighs. Athena's not a praying woman, but for that she sends out a little morse code of prayer to whatever supernatural forces are watching the scene unfold: _give me a chance. Give me just one chance. Let Janey know that I went out fighting. Let her know that I got Lilith back for it, that took one of the mystical unknowable warriors of the universe and I choked her out, let her know that she died before I did. Just one chance._

She doesn't get the chance. Not because she dies, just another bullet-ridden corpse to throw into the deadlands, but because an alien arrives to baby-sit.

Shit gets loud, and then it gets complicated.

"Sorry 'bout that," Brick says, a very confusing ten minutes later. He undoes her ropes, those big hands reversing what he'd just done a few hours earlier, and Athena has to stamp down the urge to jam her fist into his throat and bolt for it. She can feel the fist-sized bruises under her armor, blooming in messy blue patches over her ribs. Mordecai hands her a canteen, and she thinks it's moonshine until she realizes that her throat is just that parched. The water hurts as it goes down, her lips cracked from the sun and the storytelling and from the uncountable scratches and scrapes from the fight that landed her here.

Still, that's how this edge of the galaxy works. The slate is stacked, but it's always ready to be wiped clean. "It's fine," she rasps, and she does mostly mean it. Brick, Mordecai, every mook in Sanctuary with their fingers fresh from the triggers-- she's not exactly going to send them Mercenary Day's cards, but they've stood down. The air between them all is vaguely apologetic: _sorry for trying to execute you as a war criminal! no hard feelings, right?_

There's an exception, however.

The alien is in the center of Sanctuary's main square, impossible to ignore. The air crackles around it, like static. It looms, silent and still. It had seemed non-violent, but people pick their way around it carefully anyway, leaving a wide berth.

No-one would be stupid enough to defy its call for peace.

Lilith is staring at Athena from across the square. Her dainty little doll's face is still in a sneer, those unreal eyes burning hotter than ever. Athena's hands flex in their gloves, and her heart kicks hot inside her aching, angry chest.

She's not going to be that stupid. She's _not_.

But there's a first punch waiting in the wings, and she wants it winging at her.

She lopes across Sanctuary on unsteady cramped legs, her body complaining about heatstroke and dehydration and the whole litany of things that she's suffering from right now. Athena ignores it. She's had worse.

Lilith doesn't say anything. With everyone watching, she just twitches her hand, gesturing Athena away from prying eyes. Athena turns to see if they'll be followed, but the alien doesn't seem to recognize what's about to happen-- or if it does, it doesn't seem inclined to intervene.

Sanctuary is high in the air, the wasteland stretching out below. At this distance, you can hardly see the corpses. Out of sight of everyone, in a private nook behind a warehouse, Lilith sits down on the very edge, her feet dangling down into the sky. Wordlessly, Athena joins her, sitting close enough to feel the body heat radiating off of her. Lilith's hot like a desert, burning up inside. Athena feels the same way, her skin baking and her heart thumping.

"Where's the alien?" Lilith asks, her eyes fixed on the horizon.

Athena turns her neck to look back towards where she'd last seen the thing. She doesn't have to look too hard. There's buildings between them and the square, and the air is thoroughly empty of giant alien envoys. "Not here."

"Good," Lilith says, and pounces.

She's fast. She has her hand around Athena's arm in an instant, her tattoos flaring sulfur-hot. Athena grips her wrist, hard, the sort of tendon-twisting grip that no-one should be able to shrug off, but Lilith lets out a furious snarl and twists her arm, dragging Athena towards the edge, and then--

Sanctuary hadn't looked that high up when there was something between Athena and the ground. Now, it's dizzying. She can see down past her boots to the sands below, slightly blurred with the presence of far too much atmosphere.

There's yellow-red fire flickering around her, holding her in place. Lilith holds her above the ground, her hand white-knuckled on Athena's shoulder, and leans in nose-to-nose. "I'd do it again," she snarls.

Siren magic isn't exactly something that Athena's come up against before. Still, Lilith isn't entirely made of magic; there's a person under those tattoos, and Athena knows exactly how to handle a person. She opens her mouth, Lilith's wide-pupiled eyes hungry for her reply, for any excuse to drop her. Then, with great precision, Athena punches Lilith in the head.

Its messy, clocking her on the temple, but it works. Lilith's magic drops Athena, gravity kicking in in one stomach-churning lurch, but she's already rolling forward. She gets one boot on the edge, then the next ahead of it, and then she throws herself forward on top of Lilith's angry groaning form. Hellfire flaring on her arm and her one open eye full of loathing, Lilith reaches for her with flaming fingers, but Athena's evaded worse than that. She ducks under the wild swing, clamping her thighs around Lilith's skinny ribs, and pins her in place with a forearm, pressing just hard enough across Lilith's throat.

"I know," Athena whispers, and leans in just a little harder. "And so would I."

Lilith bucks up underneath Athena and sucks in a shaking gasp of breath, her teeth bared in a snarl. She makes a low, rolling noise, and Athena takes it for cut-off curses until she realizes it's _laughter_. Lilith's hands fix on Athena's waist, scrabbling and then holding, her fingers pressing hard into hip and thigh, and she bucks up against the arm across her throat, staring Athena down. 

It's either the sunstroke or the onset of incredibly short-term Stockholm syndrome, but Athena wants more of it. This. Lilith under her, those yellow eyes burning in challenge, that lithe body rocking up underneath her.

It's a bad idea, but it's patently not the worst one that anyone's had that day. 

She leans in even further, until Lilith's breath is hot on her face, and she lets Lilith kiss her.

Athena's head spins as she kisses back, her teeth scraping hard, her forearm tense against Lilith's throat. She's ten minutes on the other side of death and still kicking, fighting a fight that's been set out of her reach. She feels out of time, somehow, detached from everything in the world except the heat of Lilith underneath her, the anchoring stab of pain as Lilith digs her fingers in.

She wants to think of Janey, to do the right thing, but Lilith's different to Janey in every way. Lilith is Lilith, unmistakable even with closed eyes, and Athena's spent the last few hours imagining taking her down, breaking her apart. 

Athena needs to atone for so, so much. She's used to that.

Lilith bites, sharp and angry, and when Athena lets out a hiss of pain, she laughs and does it again. Her elbows must be getting scraped bloody on the burning hot concrete of Sanctuary, but she doesn't show it. Athena shoves her, rough, and even beaten and half-executed she's still so much stronger than Lilith, her fists calloused and her muscles steely.

Athena waits for Lilith to protest such rough treatment, but finds the opposite. When Lilith's hands slide down from Athena's waist to the inside of her thighs, Athena swats them away. She won't give Lilith any victory, no matter how small. Head spinning, blood pumping hot, she jams her own hand down between them to grab at Lilith's belt. Lilith tries to mock her-- Athena knows she is, that smirk saying as much even if Athena's heartbeat is drowning out every word of Lilith's scratchy gasps-- but Athena tunes her out and slides her hand under the band of Lilith's pants.

Some small part of her mind is aware enough to hope that they're still alone, but she can't bring herself to look. Her world has shrunk down to the hateful, smirking woman underneath her, slick hot flesh under her fingers. She rolls her fingertips, pressing hard, and the arch of Lilith's body underneath her own makes her blood sing. She can feel her own wetness between her thighs, slick as her skin brushes against skin, mixed with stale sunburned sweat. She feels like she's burning, even as she makes Lilith twist and buck underneath her.

It's not exactly killing Lilith, but after a day like this, Athena'll take what she can get. Lilith bites her lip, and it's not the sexy come-hither of the ingenue, but an angry fuck-you, trying to hold herself back. Those eyes burn, tattoos flickering, and her hands scrabble at the plates of Athena's armor, holding herself back, pulling Athena forward for more.

The concrete bruises Athena's knees, the sharp edge of Lilith's shield unit digs into her thigh, the sun beats down on them both. It's all a rolling wave of sensation, too hot too painful too sweet _too good_. Athena slides her fingers in, drags her thumb across the hard peak of Lilith's clit, and then Lilith is bucking hard against her, hands grabbing sharp, stinging handfuls of Athena's hair. Athena holds her down with one mercenary hand on her stomach, pinning her like a butterfly or an industrial accident, and wrings every quiver out of Lilith's thighs, every tremble from her arching spine, every curse from her filthy, furious lips.

Athena's absolutely disgusted. She's also the most aroused she's ever been, dizzy with it. She knows that Lilith can tell, too; Lilith drinks in the sight of her loathing, her eyes keen despite the languid heaviness of her eyelids, the slow dreamy weight of her movement.

"We've tried to kill each other, what, three times now?" Lilith's voice is as scratchy as Athena's, now, and that sends a jolt of something hot and primal down Athena's spine. "In Pandoran terms, that makes us basically married." 

That word dumps cold water over the situation, and Athena's not together enough to stop it from showing. Lilith laughs, haughty and cruel, and places her hands on Athena's shoulders. She shoves Athena over onto the concrete, and Athena lets her do it.

"Next time," Lilith says, turning with an insincere wave.

"There won't be a next time," Athena says, but as Lilith's boot-steps echo away, it sounds weak even to her own ears.


End file.
